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30 June 2009

There really is no reason why some beverages should taste so wonderful.

This song celebrates the torturing and beating and murdering and burying of grain -- the brutal punishment of barley -- which nonetheless grows and is resurrected and becomes a brew so delicious and potent that it triumphs over its tormenters, and flattens all those men who wounded it so badly.

Some form of this myth and song -- often accompanied by village harvest dance -- dates from pre-Christian pagan times. The Christian missionaries who converted the pagans tolerated these myths and songs to bridge the gap between old faith and new faith, and use the old beliefs to explain the new resurrection and triumph over death.

28 June 2009

I am SO PSYCHED! I am packing my backpack and gettin out my hikin' boots! If I leave Right Now, I should be in Buenos Aires oh maybe ... gee, I don't know, this is a real schlep. But what an adventure! Even with my lousy feet, I am confident I will succeed, nothing can stop me, nothing can possibly go worng!

27 June 2009

This is WONDERFUL news! I've wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail all my life -- the Nature, the Beauty, the Solitude, the Adventure! -- and now the Appalachian Trail has just become SO MUCH BETTER!

Thanks to a cooperative effort between the USA National Park Service, the Appalachian Trail Club, and several Central and South American governments, now you can hike all the way from Maine to Buenos Aires!!!

On June 24, Sanford arrived at the Atlanta Hartsfield Airport, at 5:43 am on a Delta Flight 110 from Buenos Aires, Argentina.[31] He was met at the airport by only one reporter, The State's Gina Smith, who had received a tip that the governor would be arriving in Atlanta.[32][33] He gave her a brief sit-down interview, wherein he claimed that he was alone for the entire trip, and did not give any other details than that he drove the coastline.[32] Sanford said that he had considered hiking the Appalachian trail, but at the last minute decided to do something "exotic".[32][34] When asked why his staff said he was hiking, Sanford replied, "I don't know." He later said "in fairness to his staff," he had told them he might do such hiking. Sanford said he cut his trip short after his chief of staff, Scott English, told him his trip was gaining a lot of media attention and he needed to come back.[35] These events prompted Republican state senator Jake Knotts to comment, "Lies. Lies. Lies. That's all we get from his staff. That's all we get from his people. That's all we get from him."[34] Several hours after arriving back in the US, Sanford held a press conference, where he admitted that he had been unfaithful to his wife.[36][32] He told reporters that he had developed a relationship with an Argentinian woman that he had met "a little over eight years ago, very innocently,"[37] and that the relationship had turned romantic about a year before.[32] Sanford's wife had become aware of his infidelities around five months beforehand, and the two had sought marriage counseling.[32] She said that she requested a trial separation about two weeks before his disappearance.[38]

Sanford resigned as Chairman of the Republican Governors Association,[39][40] and he was swiftly succeeded by Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour.[41] Sanford has not commented about the possibility of resigning his position as governor.[32]".

26 June 2009

Below the body of this story from The Jewish Daily Forward aren't Comments ... but letters written by Bernard Madoff's victims to Madoff's sentencing judge, who will hand down Madoff's prison sentence on Monday 29 June.

As the story notes, much of the public has the impression that Madoff exclusively scammed the rich and famous, movie stars, entertainment personalities, and that greed and folly were elements of every victim's fate.

These letters to the sentencing judge show the actual situations and profiles of Madoff's victims. After a lifetime of hard work and careful saving, they wanted a comfortable, modest, safe retirement. They had no fantasies of yachts and private jet planes to Aegean isles.

If anyone has wondered why Vleeptron has not blogged much about Bernard Madoff until now, it's not from a co-religionist's sympathy.

It was out of concern for my health and blood pressure. I didn't want to blow a gasket.

For one thing, Madoff lives a subset of Judaism with which I have Zilch closeness or familiarity, and his Adventures are not likely to make me want to get closer to what my mother used to describe as "meshugineh Frumm" (crazy Orthodox Jews).

Theologically, when Madoff dies (Nostrabobus predicts that will be in prison; he faces 150 years), and requests entrance to Heaven by proving he has never eaten pork or Chesapeake Bay crabs, or mixed meat with dairy, I can't wait to see the vinegary expression on God's face.

Heaven, if it exists, or other Post-Mortem rewards, just don't work like that. It's not about the lobsters and the pork chops.

But in evaluating how good a Jew Madoff is, Huckleberry Finnstein is happy to defer to the opinion of Elie Weisel, survivor of several Nazi concentration camps, and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. The funds for Weisel's charity, and Weisel's and his wife's life savings, were wiped out by Madoff's Ponzi scam. [The full story of Weisel's opinions about Madoff is printed at bottom.]

Asked what punishment he would like to see for Madoff, Wiesel said: "I would like him to be in a solitary cell with only a screen, and on that screen for at least five years of his life, every day and every night, there should be pictures of his victims, one after the other after the other, all the time a voice saying, 'Look what you have done to this old lady, look what you have done to that child, look what you have done,' nothing else."

In fact many of Madoff's victims didn't even know their finances were involved in any way with Madoff's schemes, and had never heard of Madoff. They only learned they were ruined when Madoff confessed and the headlines started screaming.

One charity entirely wiped out when the Madoff bubble burst paid for competent private defense lawyers for Pennsylvania kids in trouble with juvenile court. Instantly Pennsylvania's minors in trouble lost their lawyers, and now wander through the court system defended, if at all, by overburdened, bargain-basement state-supplied public defenders -- lawyers at the very bottom of the legal Skill Chain.

Pennsylvania's kids will now do lots of time behind bars not because of their authentic crimes or guilt, but just because this charity can no longer pay for adequate defense lawyers.Similar stories abound throughout the USA's charity sphere.

Authentic suffering -- not just cutting back from French to New York State wine -- but diseases untreated, dashed college hopes, old women and old men having to go back to working night shifts at convenience stores just to avoid homelessness ...

What would I like?I'd like Madoff to give the money back to those he stole it from.

But where the money never existed, or where it's vanished, he can't.

And where he's hidden the money in anonymous coded bank accounts around the world, he won't.

====================

The Jewish Daily ForwardEnglish editionNew York City USAWednesday 24 June 2009

Madoff’s Victims Speak OutVeterans, widowers, parents, the elderly and the sick. They are hardworking people who believed in living within their means, saving for a rainy day and putting money aside for their grandchildren’s college tuition. From across the country, victims of Bernard Madoff’s $65,000,000,000 Ponzi scheme wrote in painful detail of their hardship and losses as they implored U.S. District Judge Denny Chin to give Madoff the maximum prison time allowed by law, 150 years, at his June 29 sentencing.

In their own voices, some of the victims wrote of losing their homes, having to go on food stamps or needing to go back to work, despite being in their late 60s, to make ends meet. Many of his victims said they were shocked by the news that they were broke. Then as the slow realization set in, they found themselves questioning their faith in humanity and coping with the emotional and physical pain that the financial upheaval has wrought.

Despite the pervasive assumption that those who invested with Madoff were celebrities, the wealthy and well connected, the messages released by the court illustrate that many of Madoff’s clients had been ordinary Americans. They had trusted him or their financial advisers with their life savings, and they asked why the Securities and Exchange Commission had not saved them from the massive fraud.

Madoff surrendered to authorities last December and pleaded guilty in March to 11 criminal charges in connection with the scheme. What follows are excerpts from some of the 113 statements written by Madoff’s victims.

-– Alison Cies

* * *

Our parents didn’t, and don’t, deserve to lose everything they saved for over the decades, and they don’t deserve to have to say goodbye to their safe, unflashy home. They never harmed anybody.… Bernard Madoff lied to, and thus stole from, my parents ON A WEEKLY BASIS, with every weekly packet of confirmation slips that he sent out. That means that he lied to them, and stole from them, 52 separate times in a single year. And, because they invested with him approximately two decades ago, that means that Bernard Madoff lied to them, and stole from them, 1,040 separate times. He deserves to stay in prison for at least that many years.

Abby Frucht Wisconsin

I am an 80-year-old man in poor health whose remaining years have been totally devastated by Bernie Madoff. My wife and I have lost every dollar of our life savings in Madoff’s fraud scheme with no hope of recovery. We have had to sell every asset that we own in order to survive, and we don’t know how long the proceeds will last. I cannot begin to describe to you the toll that Madoff’s actions have taken on us financially, physically and emotionally…. Mr. Madoff is a ruthless and unscrupulous man with no conscience or remorse.

Leonard Forrest Port Saint Lucie, Florida

I have personally been in contact with several victims, most of whom have lost their entire life savings. None of these people had millions of dollars invested. They were, for the most part, humble, hardworking individuals who invested prudently and diligently to provide for their retirement. I am one of those people…. I had never heard of Bernard Madoff prior to his highly publicized arrest on December 11, 2008. And I realized only after receiving Michael Sullivan’s letter on December 20 that my entire life savings had probably been lost. I am 52 years old and once had hopes of retiring with modest means. That possibility has disappeared…. Due to his egregious deeds, Mr. Madoff deserves no better than to live under a bridge in a cardboard box, scavenging for his food and clothing, living the existence which he has undoubtedly relegated some unfortunate victims to.

Robert G. Mick

I recently read a report that Mr. Madoff has hired a jailhouse consultant who is supposed to teach him how to put his best face forward during the sentencing phase. Please be aware that he (or his wife) is using our money, that belonging to the victims, to pay that consultant. This is just one more slap in the face and once again demonstrates total disdain for the victims of his massive fraud.

Michael De Vita Chalfont, Pennsylvania

We have a 16-year-old daughter. We took her to New York three years ago to meet Bernie Madoff. He had the gall to shake her hand as we thanked him for taking such good care of our money — her college money — and all of our extended family’s money. He robbed us not only of our money, but of our faith in humanity, and in the systems in place that were supposed to protect us. Please remember his victims. Sentence this monster Madoff to the most severe punishment within your abilities. Madoff is a serial criminal.

Randy Baird

We trusted the SEC to protect us, and they failed us. At this point, we really feel like we cannot trust anyone ... I am hoping that the judicial system does not fail us, as well.

Sheila Ennis Manhattan Beach, California

Twenty-one years ago my husband invested our life savings with Bernard Madoff. He died from a heart attack two weeks later. Shortly after I buried my husband, I met with Bernard Madoff. He appeared to be a genuine, kind man. He put his arm around my shoulder and assured me that my money was safe and I should not worry. I have to admit that I was not sophisticated in investing or finance and I trusted this kindly man ... Look at the faces of the people in the courtroom; they are a small representation of the thousands that he has destroyed. Please keep all of us in your mind when you decide the fate of this heartless human being.

Norma Hill Armonk, New York

I am opening up my family’s financial status to anyone who wants to see it, which is incredibly humbling and humiliating after years of hard work and major philanthropy. My family’s name can be seen on buildings for the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the Hebrew Home for the Aged and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem ... Mr. Madoff seems to have done all he could to protect his family, while now I have lost almost everything I have to protect mine ... I had to pretend to smile when my 10-year-old daughter was around, and try not to reveal the fear that I was living with ... What gave him the right to do this to us?! He knows everything. He knows where the money is and who else is involved and is not talking, thus he shows no remorse for what he has done. For this alone, he deserves the maximum sentence. Combine that with how much suffering he has caused his investors, and it’s a slam dunk.

Caren Low Harrison, New York

Bernard Madoff did not come forward because he felt regret for his actions. He came forward because he knew he could not continue his fraud. He came forward in his own calculating way to keep the damage at a minimum for himself and his family. While he was sitting in his penthouse apartment, waiting for a hearing with his upscale lawyer and his legal team to minimize the prison time, my husband and I had to put our house up for sale, scramble to pay our bills and try not to go bankrupt ... We cannot afford a lawyer to help us.

Florence and Richard Roth Jupiter, Florida

Not wealthy, I am not the typical media portrayal of a Bernard Madoff victim. I live in a modest two-bedroom house, and I own one car. I was a small business owner and I worked six days a week for most of my life and funded my own IRA in order to retire comfortably. Now I am considered under the poverty level, and I do not think I can last another six months in my home ... The impact of this crime is far-reaching, and Bernard Madoff must be severely punished for a crime of this magnitude. Please take into account that Mr. Madoff stole not only money, but lives, dreams, futures and security.

Angelo Viola Staten Island, New York

Mr. Madoff has not cooperated with any law enforcement entities to unravel his decades-old crimes. He has not cooperated in identifying other accomplices, and essentially he took the easy way out by pleading guilty, thus avoiding any cross-examination and the thorough investigation of the facts which a trial would have necessitated ... I feel I have been economically raped. Mr. Madoff has not only stolen my money; he has stolen my lifestyle and my family’s lifestyle. I recognize I will never be able to earn what Madoff stole from me, my wife and our children, and we, as a result, are sentenced to living a life devoid of our life savings and the security and comfort that provided to us…. While the popular perception has been that the victims were primarily very wealthy Jews, the reality is that most of the victims were your neighbor next door, hardworking, middle-class, tax-paying citizens. Madoff didn’t discriminate, as long as the money was green; he took it for his own benefit.

Richard Shapiro Hidden Hills, California

I am 76 years old. I have served my country in the Korean War and have been a good tax-paying citizen. I was recommended to Madoff in 1997. I had two other investment counselors, but Madoff outperformed them every year (or so I thought), and I moved all of my money (it was in an IRA) to Madoff. I am now destitute. We had to sell our home in upstate New York at a very reduced price to avoid foreclosure. We are now living in one room in my daughter’s house in California. I cannot pay my long-term health insurance. I had to give up my car, and we are applying for food stamps. Our lives are a nightmare.

Allan Goldstein Woodland Hills, California

My husband is 92 and I am 87 years of age, and the distress and misery and anguish his vile acts have caused deserve a severe sentence. If I could, I would charge him with heartbreak, sadness and tears.

Shirley Stone

Patricia Brown Danbury, Connecticut

I am a widow of 81 years old. My husband and I invested our money for 20 years so we would have a worry-free retirement…. My husband passed away on April 8 after a long battle with cancer. In December, I found out that Madoff stole all of my money — I am broke — robbed by “The Madoff Gang.” Now I find that I was also robbed by my government. My husband and I paid taxes for years, and it is unlikely that I will ever get that back. Not only did Madoff steal money, but he caused the government to steal also…. Madoff victims have been portrayed in the media as wealthy and privileged individuals. Nothing could be further from the truth. Many Madoff victims are elderly individuals or retirees who were saving for the future and had the misfortune to believe in a powerful Wall Street insider who was repeatedly investigated and given a clean bill of health by a government watchdog agency named the SEC.

Emma De Vita Chalfont, Pennsylvania

Compiled by Alison Cies. Contact her at cies@forward.com

=================

The New York TimesFriday 27 February 2009

Elie Wiesel levelsscorn at Madoff

by Stephanie Strom

What does Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Holocaust survivor who has dedicated his life to fighting hatred and intolerance, think about Bernard Madoff?

" 'Psychopath' — it's too nice a word for him," Wiesel said in his first public comments on Madoff and the Ponzi scheme he is accused of perpetrating on thousands of individuals and charities, including the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity.

" 'Sociopath,' 'psychopath,' it means there is a sickness, a pathology. This man knew what he was doing. I would simply call him thief, scoundrel, criminal."

Wiesel's charity lost $15,200,000, and he and his wife, Marion, lost their life savings. "This was a personal tragedy where we discovered all of a sudden what we had done in 40 years — my books, my lectures, everything — was gone," said Wiesel, who shared his story as part of a panel discussion on the Madoff scandal on Thursday.

He said he began investing with Madoff at the suggestion of an old friend whom he declined to name, "just a wealthy man, not in the financial business." Wiesel said, "He too lost $50,000.000."

The Wiesels met Madoff on only two occasions, he said, adding that during one encounter Madoff had tried to persuade Wiesel to abandon his post at Boston University, where he teaches the humanities, philosophy and religion, for a chair at Queens College, alma mater of Madoff's wife, Ruth.

"We must have spoken about ethics," Wiesel said. "Some learn, and some don't."

After seeing how consistently Madoff generated handsome returns buying fairly plain-vanilla securities — "He bought 100 shares of Coca-Cola and sold 500 shares of Pfizer," Wiesel said, describing his understanding of the Madoff strategy — the Wiesels decided to invest their charity's assets with him as well.

"We checked the people who have business with him, and they were among the best minds on Wall Street, the geniuses of finance," Wiesel said. "I am not a genius of finance. I teach philosophy and literature — and so it happened."

Wiesel spoke on a panel at the "21" Club moderated by Joanne Lipman, the editor in chief of Portfolio, the Condé Nast magazine devoted to business and finance.

Another panelist, James Chanos, who specializes in short-selling, or betting that certain stock prices will fall, said Madoff's investors bore some responsibility for not heeding the warning signs.

"Every checklist of responsible behavior on behalf of fiduciaries broke down here: 'we're not going to tell you what we're in,' 'you can't see where we're investing,' the statements weren't clear, the strip-mall accounting firm," Chanos said.

Harvey Pitt, former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, said that Madoff investors were not the only ones hoodwinked in the last several years, that investors in Wall Street firms also tolerated less-than-ideal transparency. "I really do believe that there was criminality at a lot of these firms," Pitt said, citing the different valuations that financial institutions placed on the same financial instruments.

"It's not per se fraudulent to have different values for different purposes, but someone has to look at that and figure out what was going on," he said. "These kinds of things reflect more than happenstance or carelessness; they reflect criminality."

Wiesel said, however, that spotting problems was not easy. "Remember, there was a myth he created around him, that everything was so special, so unique that it had to be secret," he said, adding that his charity's accountants had not identified potential concerns about Madoff.

He said he was amazed at the outpouring of support for his charity in the wake of the scandal. "Unsolicited, hundreds of people, literally, hundreds of people we have never known sent us money through the Internet, $5, $18, $100, one even $1,000," he said.

The Elie Wiesel Foundation will hold a benefit concert on May 26 to raise more money, and Wiesel has a book, "A Mad Desire to Dance," coming out soon.

Asked what punishment he would like to see for Madoff, Wiesel said: "I would like him to be in a solitary cell with only a screen, and on that screen for at least five years of his life, every day and every night, there should be pictures of his victims, one after the other after the other, all the time a voice saying, 'Look what you have done to this old lady, look what you have done to that child, look what you have done,' nothing else."

There's not much that he wrote that deserves a ticket to Immortality. He let himself be trapped by every embarrassing cliche and convention of the Worst Moment of English-Language Literature, the 19th century.

Not all his contemporaries ended up in the trap. Holmes' fellow Civil War soldier -- actually a Union Army field medic -- Walt Whitman made of himself a volcano of originality, and singlehandedly prepared American poetry for the far more interesting and important 20th Century. He pioneered tools and perceptions for poets that endure to this day in the best American and English-language poetry. The best English poets are all intimate with Whitman. But nobody needs to feel embarrassed that he or she forgot to read the collected works of Oliver Wendell Holmes.

This is either an exception to his typical long-winded Victorian claptrap, or it isn't. You decide. Or skip it entirely and wait for Vleeptron to post something, anything, more interesting than this poem. Perhaps tomorrow would be a good time to post my new pimento cream-cheese sandwich recipe.

Eugene O'Neil liked one phrase -- maybe the whole poem -- and titled one of his last plays, finally produced posthumously, "More Stately Mansions." It is possible, even through the Victorian claptrap, to like this poem not for its clumsy verbosity, but for its sentiment. A not very great (though, in his day, immensely popular) poet is sincerely yearning for something many would recognize as important, and does the best Victorian job he can to express his yearning.

He wishes to celebrate a simple, pretty marble, and reaches for a garishly colored 12-pound Spalding bowling ball. Simplicity and directness, not to mention brevity, were not centerpieces of Victorian poetry.

The chambered nautilus itself (Nautilus pompilius) is a unique and impressive ocean cephalopod (the same group as octopus and squid). It rises and sinks in the ocean because of its hard-shell air chambers; as it grows larger, it grows new, larger, watertight chambers. The squishy, living, many-tentacled creature lives safely inside the most recent and largest chamber of the remarkable shell.

The shell is nacre, or mother-of-pearl, made from calcium carbonite extracted from seawater.

The illustration above shows the geometric pattern of the chambered nautilus, which mathematicians have noted and admired for centuries. The math alone -- a logarithmic spiral first described by Descartes -- is sweepingly elegant and simple. Jakob Bernoulli called it spira mirabilis, the marvelous spiral.

It grows larger and larger -- but its shape is always the same, chamber after chamber, year after year. An infant nautilus has exactly the same shape as a full-grown nautilus; near Indonesia and the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, shell diameters can reach 268 millimeters = 10.6 inches.

Hawks and flying insects, tropical cyclones, brocolli florets and spiral galaxies also obey the plan of the spira mirabilis.

And yet no marine biologist has ever suggested the chambered nautilus has the slightest realization of what a clever, even wonderful mathematician and physicist it is. Alan Turing spent a lot of time late in his life studying and writing about these built-in, automatic mathematics skills of living things, and how computers might be programmed to mimic this phenomenon. DNA itself has astonishing computational skill and power, used chiefly to correct the tiniest errors in its endless replications. Without this superfast, superpowerful, constant digital computation, our kids would look a lot less like Mom and Dad, if they survived conception, pregnancy and birth at all.

I don't know how tasty Nautilus pompilius is. If it tastes anything like squid or octopus, it might be delicious. If I got my hands on some, I'd start with fresh-ground black pepper, but lightly, not to smother what's probably a very subtle taste.

I have no idea how two chambered nautiluses have sex and reproduce. I don't think Holmes had any idea, either, which is why so much of his poetry found a welcome home in high-school textbooks -- our shrines for Literature Certified to Be 100% Sex-Free. There's a lot less Whitman in high-school textbooks.

~ ~ ~

The Chambered Nautilus

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)THIS is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main,— The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair. Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; Wrecked is the ship of pearl! And every chambered cell,Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, Before thee lies revealed,— Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed! Year after year beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door,Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more. Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, Child of the wandering sea, Cast from her lap, forlorn! From thy dead lips a clearer note is bornThan ever Triton blew from wreathèd horn! While on mine ear it rings, Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:— Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past!Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!

[the link to the Hotel Marvin Euler has been removed. See Comments below.]

I am going to walk by on Thursday and will give it a nod. Most guests probably don't even know who Leonard Euler is, that he once used to be on one of our bills or where Königsberg is. They probably just want a soft bed, room service and a wake-up call in the morning.

I have decided to go back to school and work for a CompTIA A+ exam, basic skills in programming languages such as Java or SQL may be inevital I fear. Apart from many other things. Oh bloody hell. The introduction lesson will be on said Thursday when I will walk past the Hotel Euler.

And I can't believe I am pulling plugs for MS. Get Ubuntu or even better, get a Mac ! You can still run Windows via Bootcamp or Wine if you really have to

====================

Can you walk in the lobby and see if maybe they got a pretty little free postcard of the hotel? I asked you last year to scout me up some good local hotels -- I think you just found my hotel in Basel.

(I know I owe you some postcards. I got the postcards. I got the stamps. I just haven't put the stamps on the postcards and mailed them yet. I think Freud called this kind of behavior Anal Retentive, it comes from Bad Toilet Training at Age 2 or whenever.)

You should have seen the Gazillion Koroner notes of the Socialist Heroes in Czechoslovakia, they had a nasty-looking Soviet-style soldier holding a Kaloshnikov with the cylindrical ammo magazine. If he had a Speech Balloon, he would be saying: Don't try anything funny, Tovarich.

A Gazillion Koroner would have bought you a cup of coffee in Prague -- if they had any coffee, which was not all the time. Edible food was also a common challenge.

I used to have a flatmate who said that capitalism was by far the best economic system, because only a capitalist economy could produce 14 competing different models of electric guitars. How could Marx possibly have refuted that? I don't think Marx even played the ukulele. (Karl, anyway, I think Groucho plays the ukulele in a couple of movies.)

Anyway, if you want to be a Successful, even a Great Sovereign Nation, you don't put a threatening soldier on your money. You put your country's greatest Philosoph on your money.

Or the world's greatest Mathematician, if he just happens to hang in your Sovereign Nation. You festoon your hard cash with the portraits of your most brilliant Dreamers.

In the little Amsterdam hotel, I asked the front-desk lady to make me a phone call to the Spinoza House because I don't speak any Dutch, and she very nicely made the phone call and found out what I needed to know about visiting Spinoza's little house (he rented the upstairs from a sympathetic surgeon) in Rijnsburg.

Later I was in the bar and she came up to me, she looked a little embarrassed, and said:

"Of course I have heard of Spinoza. But ... just who was he?"

I didn't know the Dutch word "Wijsgeer," but my father had used the word "Philosoph," he pronounced it with a pan-Euro spin, so I told her he was a great Philosoph. She nodded, she understood, she smiled. Danke wel.

The Euro was already in business and had extincted the old Guilder notes. But later I found out why she knew Spinoza's name -- and had even seen his face now and then.

You could probably have bought a used deux chevaux with a Spinoza.

The Euler, on the other hand -- 10 Suisse (old? new?) francs, this was real Straßegelt, 20 of these jumped in and out of your wallet every week. Everybody knew what Leonhard Euler looked like. In Confoederatio Helvetica he was as familiar as Elvis.

Interestingly enough, the Nasty Socialist Hero Soldier with the Kaloshnikov was a symbol of hyperinflation and worthless currency. Nobody in Prague wanted it, they asked for DM or Pound Sterling or U$, anything but the local stuff.

But with Euler and Spinoza -- this is Real Money, you can have a very nice brandy, or a short airplane flight, or a long train trip along the Rhine. I'll bet a Spinoza could have bought you Companionship in Amsterdam for the evening, and you would get change back.

I so terribly miss the Old Money. It was such a pleasant nightmare changing it two or three times a day when you crossed a border, seeing all these new faces, wondering who they were -- not just the Dreamers, but the Queens and Kings, the Revolutionaries who overthrew them, the Statesmen.

Newton made the biggest impression of all. After his nervous breakdown, his friends dragged him out of Cambridge, he bought a house in London, and eventually used his fame and connections to become England's Master of the Mint. He had to supervise a new coinage.

The old silver and gold coins kept shrinking -- people would use scissors to snip around the outsides of the coins. So Newton invented Milling -- the ribbed circumference of coins, so you can tell immediately if it's the original size or has been snipped and shrunk.

A counterfeiter and confidence man accused Newton of corrupting the currency. He probably thought Newton was a silly old Dreamer and no match for the confidence man's clever attacks.

Newton defended his new coins very effectively. When it was all over, he was still Master of the Mint. And the confidence man -- well, counterfeiting and Monkey Business with the national Money is considered High Treason, and the punishment for that was to be Drawn and Quartered. That must have hurt.

18 June 2009 - Journalists in France demonstrate in support of their Iranian colleagues

17 June 2009 - Press freedom violations recounted in real time

The Islamic Republic of Iran now ranks alongside China as the world’s biggest prison for journalists. The crackdown has been intensified yet again following Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s endorsement of the result of the 12 June presidential election and the opposition’s decision to call another demonstration on 20 June.

Iran now has a total of 33 journalists and cyber-dissidents in its jails, while journalists who could not be located at their homes have been summoned by telephone by Tehran prosecutor general Said Mortazavi.

“The force of the demonstrations in Tehran is increasing fears that more Iranian journalists could be arrested and more foreign journalists could be expelled,” Reporters Without Borders said. “The regime has been visibly shaken by its own population and does not want to let this perception endure. That is why the media have become a priority target.”

The press freedom organisation added: “The international community cannot continue to ignore the situation. It must have a clear and unanimous reaction that is proportionate to the gravity of these events. And there will never be any question of recognising the results of the 12 June election.”

Reporters Without Borders already wrote to the leaders of the European Union’s 27 member countries urging them not to recognise President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s reelection.

It has emerged that Mohammad Ghochani, the editor of Etemad Meli (a daily owned by Mehdi Karoubi, one of the opposition presidential candidates), was arrested at 2 a.m. on 18 June. Intelligence ministry officials took him away to an unknown location, probably the security wing of Tehran’s Evin prison.

Ghochani is also the editor of the dailies Shargh and Hammihan and the weekly Saharvand Emroz. The publication of all these newspapers had already been suspended before his arrest.

Reporters Without Borders has also learned that blogger and human rights activist Shiva Nazar Ahari was arrested at her Tehran home on 14 June (see her blog: http://azadiezan.blogspot.com).

Husband-and-wife journalists Bahaman Ahamadi Amoee and Jila Baniyaghoob were arrested at midnight of 20 June by intelligence ministry officials in plain clothes who searched their home and then took them away to an as yet unknown location, probably the security wing of Tehran’s Evin prison.

A winner of the Courage in Journalism prize awarded by the International Women’s Media Foundation, Baniyaghoob edits a news website that focuses on women’s rights, Canon Zeman Irani (http://irwomen.net). Her husband, Amoee, writes for various pro-reform publications.

Reporters Without Borders has also been able to confirm that Ali Mazroui, the head of the Association of Iranian Journalists, was arrested in the morning of 20 June.

The BBC confirmed in the afternoonof 21 June that its Tehran correspondent, Jon Leyne, has been ordered to leave the country within 24 hours. Officials accused him of “supporting rioters”. The authorities had previously accused Britain of “conspiring“ against Iran.

Journalists and activists held in Evin prison are being put under a lot of pressure to make filmed “confessions” acknowledging their participation in a “velvet revolution.” Reporters Without Borders has also received many allegations of torture.

The state radio and TV broadcaster is meanwhile putting out false information about the opposition candidates and the cancellation of today’s demonstration. Foreign news agency correspondents are also being pressured not to report anything about the opposition.

After being blocked since 11 June, the Iranian news website Entekhab (www.entekhabnews.com/) has now been closed down on the orders of the Tehran prosecutor general.

At least 20 journalists had already been arrested since 12 June (see list below). Reporters Without Borders has not been able to trace many others. Some may have found refuge but others may now be with those of their colleagues who had already been in jail for some time. Even before the election, Iran was ranked as the Middle East’s biggest prison for journalists and cyber-dissidents.

Twenty-three journalists have been arrested in the week since the presidential election results :

14 June:

- Somayeh Tohidloo, who also keeps a blog (http://smto.ir)

- Ahmad Zeydabadi

- Kivan Samimi Behbani

- Abdolreza Tajik

- Mahssa Amrabad

- Behzad Basho, a cartoonist

- Khalil Mir Asharafi, a TV producer

- Karim Arghandeh, a blogger (http://www.futurama.ir/) and reporter for pro-reform newspapers Salam, Vaghieh and Afaghieh, who was arrested at his Tehran home.

- Shiva Nazar Ahari (see her blog: http://azadiezan.blogspot.com).

15 June:

- Mohamad Atryanfar, the publisher of several newspapers including Hamshary, Shargh and Shahrvand Emrouz, who has reportedly been taken to the security wing of Evin prison.

- Saeed Hajjarian, the former editor of the newspaper Sobh-e-Emrouz, who was arrested at his Tehran home on the night of 15 June despite being badly handicapped.

- Mojtaba Pormohssen, who edits the newspaper Gylan Emroz and contributes to several other pro-reform newspapers and radio Zamaneh. He was arrested in the northern city of Rashat.

16 June:

- Mohammad Ali Abtahi, also known as the “Blogging Mullah,” who was arrested at his Tehran home. His blog: http://www.webneveshteha.com/.

- Hamideh Mahhozi, arrested in the southern city of Bushehr.

- Amanolah Shojai, who is also a blogger. Arrested in Bushehr.

- Hossin Shkohi, who works for the weekly Paygam Jonob. Arrested in Bushehr.

- Mashalah Hidarzadeh, arrested in Bushehr.

17 June:

- Saide Lylaz, a business reporter for the newspaper Sarmayeh, who had been very critical of Ahmadinejad’s policies. He was arrested at his Tehran home.

In some countries a journalist can be thrown in prison for years for a single offending word or photo. Jailing or killing a journalist removes a vital witness to events and threatens the right of us all to be informed. Reporters Without Borders has fought for press freedom on a daily basis since it was founded in 1985.

Investigate, expose and support

Reporters Without Borders:- defends journalists and media assistants imprisoned or persecuted for doing their job and exposes the mistreatment and torture of them in many countries.- fights against censorship and laws that undermine press freedom.- gives financial aid each year to 100 or so journalists or media outlets in difficulty (to pay for lawyers, medical care and equipment) as well to the families of imprisoned journalists.- works to improve the safety of journalists, especially those reporting in war zones.

Before taking action, Reporters Without Borders researchers, who each handle a region (Africa, the Americas, Asia/Pacific, Europe and the former Soviet bloc, Middle East/ North Africa) or a topic such as the Internet, compile reports of press freedom violations. After checking the information, the researchers and the organisations’ correspondents send protest letters to the authorities to put pressure on governments which do not respect the right to inform and to be informed, and send releases to the media to drum up support for the journalists under attack.

Sometimes gathering information is not enough. A Reporters Without Borders fact-finding mission is then sent to investigate on the spot the working conditions of journalists, as well as cases of imprisoned or murdered journalists, and also to meet with the authorities in the country concerned.

Publicity campaigns conducted with the help of public relations firms aim to inform people and try to give countries which do not respect this basic right a bad name in the eyes of international institutions, the media and governments that have ties with them.

Reporters Without Borders is funded by the sale of its twice-annual albums of photographs as well as calendars, by auctions, small and large donations, member dues, public grants and partnerships with private firms.

An international organisation

Reporters Without Borders is present in all five continents through its national branches (in Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland), its offices in New York, Tokyo and Washington, and the more than 120 correspondents it has in other countries. The organisation also works closely with local and regional press freedom groups that are members of the Reporters Without Borders Network, in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Burma, Colombia, Democratic Congo, Eritrea, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Peru, Romania, Russia, Somalia, the United States and Tunisia.

Reporters Without Borders is registered in France as a non-profit organisation and has consultant status at the United Nations.

In 2005, the organisation won the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.

A constantly-updated website

All the organisation’s press releases and publications are available online in five languages (Arabic, English, French, Spanish and Persian) at its website www.rsf.org which keeps a daily-updated list of journalists killed or imprisoned around the world. It also contains detailed reports on special cases and invites the public to sign online petitions for the release of jailed journalists.

Press freedom events

As well as its daily press releases, fact-finding mission reports and regular publications, Reporters Without Borders stages several annual events to highlight the issue of press freedom.

- The round-up of press freedom in the world In January, the organisation summarises the previous year, with the number of journalists arrested, threatened, physically attacked or killed and media censored.

- World Press Freedom Day On this day (May 3), Reporters Without Borders publishes its list of the predators of press freedom, as well as a book of photographs which is sold to raise money for the organisation to continue its work.

- The Worldwide Press Freedom Index Issued in October, measuring the degree of freedom journalists and media have in more than 160 countries.

- Jailed Journalists Support Day Reporters Without Borders has lobbied media and journalists since 1989 to “adopt” journalists imprisoned for doing their job and to publicise their plight on this day each November so they are not forgotten. A second book of photographs is also published on the day to raise money to help imprisoned journalists.

- The Reporters Without Borders Prize In December. This honours a journalist who, by work, attitude or principled stands, has shown strong belief in press freedom, a media outlet that exemplifies the battle for the right to inform the public and to be informed, a defender of press freedom and a cyber-dissident spearheading freedom of expression online.

I tried to read all of this post but I got a headache. Sunday, 21 June, 2009

=========================Again, I am not saying how I voted about whether you are a human or a spambot, but I am increasingly leaning against the proposition that you are software. Software can make you want to kill the ATM machine, but it rarely whines and kvetches. Whining and kvetching are, so far, the exclusive province of H. sapiens.

But as you can see, I have the skills to write a program that repeats endlessly:

"Are we there yet?"

Yankee Magnetic Software's all-time best-seller was "Beer.exe", which picked a Very Big Random Integer (we have discussed this Random thing before), and then displayed on the screen:

624489022 bottles of beer on the wall624489022 bottles of beertake one down, pass it around624489021 bottles of beer on the wall

624489021 bottles of beer on the wall624489021 bottles of beertake one down, pass it around624489020 bottles of beer on the wall

624489020 bottles of beer on the wall624489020 bottles of beertake one down, pass it around624489019 bottles of beer on the wall

624489019 bottles of beer on the wall624489019 bottles of beertake one down, pass it around624489018 bottles of beer on the wall

... a never-ending annoyance previously only sung by elementary school children to the bus driver on a long field trip. I made the computer act exactly like a busful of elementary school children. Except that eventually kids get bored or have to sleep. Beer.exe had no such limitations as long as there were still a few bottles of beer on the wall.

This is not Quite So Silly or Dumb. Or maybe it is Silly and Dumb.

As Fox News Channel (Murdoch) proclaims:We report. You decide.

But

It's software, you're not supposed to READ it, you're supposed to Copy & Paste it into a QuickBasic compiler, and then RUN it so it makes your computer do a Very Nifty Thing.

But I found it very liberating to post my actual pathetic programming skills and talents to the entire planet, many of whose residents make their living writing software. Posting my actual code (which nobody can see or read after the program is compiled into a stand-alone *.exe file) to all Cyberspace felt a lot like walking into a Sarah Palin rally wearing a Late Night with David Letterman t-shirt. About my crappy programming skills, I have always been rather shy.

Not 100% secretive. This guy Gordon Shumway (the name which ALF the cat-eating Alien Life Force used to get credit cards and Victoria's Secret catalogs) found this readable code on

a QuickBasic Labor-of-Love Kult Site that Dieter runs out of Germany. Weirdos like me dump their screwy proggies on Dieter's QuickBasic website as freeware, and anybody can hose it up and run it.All dialects of BASIC were supposed to have been laughed out of Dodge decades ago. Finally about 8 years ago, Microsoft, which had developed the super-sophisticated dialect QuickBasic, took it out in the backyard and shot it. Microsoft no longer sells, supports or continues to develop QuickBasic.

And now my beloved QuickBasic is having bad allergic reations and dysfunctions when you try to run it in the Microsoft Windows Vista OS.

Not just abandoned and unsupported. Now Mom is trying to suffocate, strangle and murder her baby.I would so much like to Dialogue with Bill Gates about that and express my Disappointment personally to him. I would like to Share My Feelings about that with him, and with Melinda if she's in the room or on the yacht or the private Lear Jet.

BASIC is the only lingo I know how to use to force computers to Dance To My Every Whimsical Tune. When I have troubles using BASIC, I can't make my computer, or everybody's computer, do Everything I Want My Worldwide Army of Silicon-Based Slaves To Do.

Look -- I don't ask for much. I just want to write BASIC programs to make all the computers in the world obey me. Is that wrong?

Evil People do things along those lines, but you can detect their Evilness because they do it in C++ -- the language of brain-dead industrial software Morlocks in cubicles.

The BASIC kult are the last surviving True Believers that ANYBODY, no matter how dumb or clumsy or ignorant, should be able to Completely Control any computer. All it takes is BASIC, the documentation, and a big bottle of Aspirin. And a week or two, or a month or two, of your Time. How much Time depends on how complicated or ambitious the Slave Dance you want the computer to do is.

That was the whole idea of the two math professors at Dartmouth College (New Hampshire USA), John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz, who invented BASIC. In 1964 they could see computers springing up all over the place, but almost nobody knew how to enslave them, because all the programming languages were Too Fucking Complicated to learn or grasp. Only a Specialist Programming Elite could make computers dance.

So they invented BASIC. After Just 1 Night of Real Simple Study ... Shazam! Your computer dances to your every whimsical tune!

Anyway, find a Nerd who can hose Konig7 up, and run it on your computer. Then you can watch the Whimsical But Mathematically and Educationally Significant Dance Across the 7 Bridges of Konigsberg.

As Vleeptron has discussed before -- the occasion, I think, of your first Comment -- I think the 7 Bridges of Konigsberg is one of the most charming Fairie Tales anybody on Planet Earth ever cooked up, I have been entranced by it since the first time I heard about it. I have even tried to go to Konigsberg twice.

Which is not an easy trick, because Kongisberg no longer exists.

But still, with determination, backpack, and Bad Judgment, it can be done and I am gonna get there.

My own travels have taught me that if I ever do get there, there will be Australians of both genders with backpacks in line in front of me. Them suckers are Travellin' Fooles!

Either the 7 Bridges of Konigsberg will move you very deeply, hypnotize, fascinate, astonish, thrill, excite, enflame, captivate, challenge and mesmerize you.